"I knew I had a reason for hating that car," Sam babbles, spits from where she is sitting on the hood of Danny's car. Danny sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, trying not to snap at her, trying to tame the anger that is scratching, bitting his stomach .
Sam has been nothing but rude the moment they left the casino together. Under the heavy, harsh, hot Sun of Vegas, Sam is sweating rudeness and meanness. It sticks and slides all over her skin, infects her words and Danny wants to scream.
It's supposed to be a good day.
But she keeps being awful and throwing shades about his car and she knows, she knows, he adores this car, so she keeps hitting, keeps pushing his buttons, buttons he didn't know he had.
"Shut up, Sam. Just shut up, okay?" he says finally as he drops the tool onto the ground.
He's not going to fix the stupid flat tyre. Not when he is doing it all wrong, with the tyre, with Sam. He knew he was running towards a disaster the moment he got involved with her, but now, he feels like he's racing towards it, with his foot pressed on the accelerator and fear in his stomach.
"No. Not okay! You don't tell me to shut up," she hops off the hood and rises on her tiptoes as her finger pokes at his chest.
She has drops of sweat in the middle of her forehead, on the bridge of her nose and right above her upper lip. His mom used to say that only bad people with an ugly past, bad people with a sad story could sweat on those places. Danny wonders if Sam could fit into one of those categories and which it would be.
"What's wrong with you today?" he hisses as he grabs her wrist, preventing her from moving her finger, or her hand, preventing her from moving at all. "You've been a total bitch—yes, Sam, a total bitch—since the moment we left. It was supposed to be great, just the two of us, you know. But you've been complaining the whole time and the flat tyre sure didn't help but you are sure not helping right now! So I'm asking you again, what's wrong?"
It's the impatience, the frustration all over his face, all over his posture that makes her snap.
"WHAT'S WRONG? YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S WRONG? I'M TIRED AND IT'S UNBEARABLY HOT AND I HAVE DESERT SAND ALL OVER ME, IN MY SHOES, IN MY HAIR AND MAYBE EVEN MY PANTIES! AND YOU, YOU JUST DECIDED TO CLEAR MY SCHEDULE FOR THE REST OF THE DAY WITHOUT CONSULTING ME FIRST, LIKE YOU OWN ME! AND THEN YOU GRABBED ME OUT OF NOWHERE AND PUT ME IN YOUR STUPID CAR! PEOPLE ARE GONNA ASK QUESTIONS, DANNY! THEY'RE GONNA ASK ABOUT US—"
"—WHO CARES? EVERYBODY ALREADY KNOWS ANYWAY, SAM!" he yells back, his hands up in his hair now and it's when the screaming and the yelling die that all he can hear is Sam's harsh breath that he realises he should have told her about that, about everybody knowing about them. It's when Sam looks at him with confusion and apprehension that he realises he fucked up.
She takes a step back and Danny can see the walls behind her eyes going up, he can see her pulling up her defences all over again. It scares him, terrifies him. She could refuse to let him in again, and the thought sends cold and aching tingles on his spine.
"I mean...they don't know for sure...not all of them...but I think…I mean, I'm pretty sure...they all suspect...sorta..." he sutters and he wants to reach out for her, he wants to touch her. But right now he feels like there's a wall between them, a wall that won't fall unless she decides so.
"You didn't tell me. Why didn't you tell me?"
"You would have broken up with me," he says and his fingers twitch when she doesn't contradict him. "You would have freaked out. You're freaking out," he adds.
She's not saying anything, not looking at him, and even if she's just a few inches away from him, she seems miles away, somewhere he can't go, can't reach and she looks like she could leave right now and she wouldn't care if it leaves him broken and unfixable.
He licks his lips. They taste like bits of hope, they taste like bits of her. "We've been together for what? Six months now?"
"Seven, actually. Seven months in five days."
The idea of her counting makes him smile. "7 months, right. Great. We could tell them."
"No."
There's something terrible in the back of her eyes and Danny silently wishes she would never stop talking because whenever she ties her lips, whenever she goes all silent and pensive he could see shadows of fear and distrust lurking all around her brown orbs and pinching her rosy mouth.
He wants to destroy them, to burn them, those shadows, that darkness that Sam carries with her all the time.
"Why? Are you ashamed of me or something?" he asks.
She shakes her eyes and ignores the urge to hug him and to reassure him, and to tell him how perfect he is.
"Then why? Sam, I don't get it—"
"You and I, us, it's not gonna last," she says and her eyes are huge on her face, so huge that they look like they're going to eat her, the whole of her, and there's nothing he can do to save her. "With all my failures and my bad nature, it's not gonna last. I just want to keep it secret and hidden so that when it ends, when we're over, I'll hide the tears and the heartbreak. I'll be miserable in secret."
Her fake smile and ugly lies ruin her pretty face. He doesn't understand right away, or maybe he doesn't want to understand at all. But he lets it go because she's being unreasonable and stubborn but even trapped in her own unreasonable and stubborn world, he thinks she's still beautiful. With sand in her hair and her strands all over the place, she's never looked more delicate and he just wants to kiss the self-doubt and self-hate out of her.
Now his hands are on her waist, caressing the softness of her skin, his eyes staring down at her with kindness and tenderness.
"Hey, look at me... Please, look at me, Sam," when she does, he kisses the top of her nose and she smiles and she shines and everything is perfect again. "You and I, it's gonna last. We're forever. We're infinite. Mark my words, Marquez."
She rolls her eyes but she's the one that iniates the hug and she finds herself counting his heartbeats as her ear rests against his chest. "Whatever you say, Pretty Boy McCoy."
It's later, much later, after fixing the tyre, and taking tons of pics, and making even more memories, when they're back home and safe in the warmth of their blankets that Danny realises he should have told Sam he loved her.
He should have told her that he loved her so that the sand would have flied away and carried this secret along the way, so that a bit of his love for Sam would have travelled everywhere and lived forever.
